


Where the First Punch Lands

by kj_graham



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-25 09:23:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20721908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kj_graham/pseuds/kj_graham
Summary: This won a Gold Key from Scholastic's Art and Writing Awards in 2018. I'm still proud of it and wanted to share.





	Where the First Punch Lands

**Author's Note:**

> This won a Gold Key from Scholastic's Art and Writing Awards in 2018. I'm still proud of it and wanted to share.

It's on their usual weekly lunch date that Bentley suddenly drops his fork, grabs Jude's hand excitedly, and leans forward across the table.

"I want you to come over," he says.

Jude laughs a little, the sound laced with bitterness as usual. Bentley is still trying to get used to her constantly jaded attitude, even after all this time. "I've been to your house before, babe." She pops a French fry into her mouth. "It's kind of the girlfriend's job."

Bentley shakes his head, his blond curls shagging into his eyes. "No, I want to show you something you haven't seen before."

Jude raises an eyebrow and cocks her head to the side, smirking teasingly. "I've been to your place more times than I can count and there's still something I haven't seen before?"

Bentley nods, stabbing another forkful of salad.

Jude's grin grows. "Is it the secret shrine to Matthew McConaughey I know you're hiding somewhere?"

Bentley laughs, his cheeks flushing. "What? Shrine to—no. No, absolutely not." “I'm not sure I believe that,” she says. “But I guess I'll come over.”

She leans forward and pecks Bentley's lips, knocking her shoulder against his. His shoulder throbs dully in response to the hit.

They return to their food and Bentley pretends not to notice it when Jude smiles a little too brightly at their waiter and leans forward, spilling cleavage onto the tabletop. If she's willing to date him, he's willing to overlook things.

Bentley's plants take up an entire bedroom, making the guest room into a home-grown jungle. There are the more mundane ones, sunflowers and forget-me-nots and onion grass, and then there are the more exotic ones, such as the seventeen different kinds of cactus, the Venus Fly Trap, the bamboo shoots.

Each one stands in an ordinary clay pot, arranged on the floor and the windowsill and the bookshelves nailed to the wall.

Every plant has a strip of white duct tape across the pot, labeled in neat script with a word.

It's only the second time Bentley has ever let anyone inside this room. The first was his mother, who signed him up for a therapist even though he was bordering twenty-two.

When Jude steps into the room, her jaw drops a little. He's expecting some sort of scathing sarcastic comment to tumble out of her mouth, but she stays silent. Today, her long muddy curls are cascading freely down her back, brown eyes wide as she takes in the room.

"I, uh, I can explain," he says, scratching the back of his neck. "The tape, I mean. And the words."

Under her breath, Jude murmurs, "you better have a damn good explanation for this." Her heels click against the hardwood as she walks around the room, hands on her hips, chin tilted up with disdainful confidence, gazing around at the several dozen plants he's managed to fit in here.

Bentley tactfully ignores the comment, watching his leather-jacket-clad, motorcycle-boot-wearing, dark-winged-eyeliner-and-red-lipstick girlfriend weave through the rows of the plants. Her fingers catch on leaves and Bentley winces as he sees them tug, watches them almost snap.

"You might notice there are more kinds of cactus and Venus Fly Traps and other odd, dangerous plants than anything else," Bentley starts, sounding like a tour guide.

"I see that," Jude responds, scooching further away from a rack of poison ivy as she passes it. The poison ivy's tape is above it.

"Every single one of those has a label," he continues, putting his hands on his hips. His chest puffs out like a proud mama bird. "I mean, every plant in this room does, but all of the plants that are dangerous or connotatively 'bad' in some form are thematic in how they relate to me.”

Jude raises an eyebrow at his textbook-ish speech. Her lips are pursed, eyes narrowed slightly. He feels like a nervous, uncoordinated twenty-year-old all over again, dared by his friends to ask that hot brunette over there to get a drink and share a dance.

"They all have something written on them that I don't like about myself." Bentley's voice is far too cheery for such a statement. "For example, this Parodia Cactus," he says, striding quickly through the room and stopping at one of the bookshelves, gesturing up at a small spherical cactus. "This one says 'too quiet.' And, and that Venus Fly Trap right there, above your right shoulder, that one says 'harsh' because if I am talking, most of the time I'm being way too harsh and no one likes a jerk, right?"

Jude stops walking and throws a hand up, her mouth open and nose scrunched into something like disgust, but Bentley is already flurrying through the room again, stopping at another, taller cactus. "And this Apple Cactus says 'overthinker.' I'm working on it, but it isn't really changing all that much so the label has to stay."

"Bentley," Jude says, her voice tight and itching with irritation, "are there any plants in here that aren't bad things?"

"Oh, the forget-me-nots say 'good memory' on them." Bentley chuckles.

He's about to start another sentence, but Jude throws a hand up. "Bentley, stop," she says. He nods, but then one of the plants catches his eye and he goes to speak again. "Stop, I mean it," Jude says, shutting her eyes, her voice getting louder and firmer. Bentley shrinks back into himself and stays quiet.

She's standing up tall and stiff, hands stretched out in front of her, eyebrows raised and eyes wide. "Is this some kind of joke?”

Bentley almost takes a step back. Jude is practically radiating disgust and fear and for a second Bentley wonders when exactly her temper snaps and what exactly happens when it does.

"I—I don't know," he says, voice blown out to a whisper. "No."

Jude scoffs. “Why do this, then?" Jude says, her voice lowered, eyes sweeping the rows of plants.

Bentley shifts and looks down at his feet. Jude recalls seeing 'big feet' on one pot.

“I don’t know,” he mutters. “I think it’s just a coping mechanism.”

“This is just--I don’t know--it’s just worrying, Bentley, that you’ve labeled every plant in

here with something bad.”

Bentley closes his eyes for a moment. “You know, I put up with a lot of your crap,” he says when he opens them, but even he looks surprised.

Jude narrows her eyes, but for a moment her response is all tangled up in her throat. “Excuse me?”

"You’re always flirting with other guys," Bentley says, cheeks flushing red. "You were practically putting your breasts on display for that waiter. Maybe you've just been trying to pick up as many guys as you possibly can behind my back, because you know what, I wouldn't put it past you,"

"I wouldn't think you'd have the guts to talk to me like that," she says, her voice low and icy. "Especially not now that I've seen the crazy self-torture you're capable of. It's sick. And now you want to blame everything on me. Real mature."

"Better than being a manipulative, sneaky bitch who cares about no one but herself," he spits, and Jude reaches out, swiping ‘good listener’ off the shelf, the pot crashing to the floor. Clay pieces, flower petals, soil, spill everywhere, fanning out in front of Bentley's feet.

Jude crunches straight over the mess, jabbing a finger into Bentley's chest.

"You're a freak," she says, droplets of spit flying onto his face.

Slowly, exaggeratedly, he wipes a drop away from his eye, then glares down at her.

"If you loved me you would try to be a little more accepting." His voice cracks and bends

at the corners of his words.

Jude narrows her eyes, opening her mouth to say something, but Bentley speaks before she can.

"Get out," he says, voice quiet but Jude can't deny that he's angry, the angriest she has ever seen him. "We're done. I've been unhappy for long enough."

After three days of not hearing from Jude, he goes out and buys a packet of Nightshade seeds, plants them, and names them ‘Jude.’ Two weeks later, they start to sprout, cracking up through the dirt in their pot, next to the newly-repotted ‘good listener.’


End file.
